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Having Joey’s baby inside of me felt like I still had a part of him with me.
Like I was talking to him.
“See?” I let my finger trail over the photograph. “That’s your daddy holding the winner’s cup in third year. He was the captain of the school hurling team that year, and he was the best on the pitch. And that’s Uncle Podge standing beside him, and right in the back with his shirt over his head is Uncle Al. He’s a little unstable, but we love him anyway.” My gaze flicked to Paul who was also in the team photo, and I grimaced. “And that guy right there is Mammy’s first boyfriend. Daddy likes to call him Paul the prick.”
A weird little shiver rolled through me when the baby squirmed in response, causing my poor, overstretched stomach to ripple. “Take it handy, little hurler,” I cooed, stroking the part of my stomach where I felt the most pressure. “Poor Mammy doesn’t need any more stretchmarks, okay? So, you just hang tight in there.”
123
Let’s Talk about Intimacy
JOEY
“Let’s talk about intimacy.”
“Let’s not.”
“I want you to go back to the beginning,” my psychiatrist said calmly. “Back to your earliest memories.”
“Intimacy.” I glared across the room at her, feeling beyond irritated. The shit this woman asked me. It was beyond the pale. “The fuck has intimacy got to do with anything?”
“A great deal,” she replied, offering me a reassuring smile. “Let’s start off with your earliest memory of being held.”
“Sexually?”
“Let’s start off with emotionally,” she instructed. “Do you remember a time in your life when your parents held you?”
“My parents.”
She nodded. “Your mother, for instance.”
I stiffened. “This is fucked up.”
“Just go with it,” she coaxed. “Have I led you astray yet?”
“No,” I reluctantly had to admit, while I tried to think back to when I was a kid. “I remember my father hugging me.”
“Let’s focus on that, shall we?”
“As in?”
“As in tell me about that memory.”
“I think I was about five or six?” I offered, struggling to hold the memory in place. “It was before we went into care for those six months. And I’d scored the winning goal in a match.”
“A hurling match?”
I nodded. “He was so fucking excited about it that he picked me up and threw me in the air.” I rubbed my jaw and blew out a pained breath at the memory. “Took me to the shop afterward and bought me a pound’s worth of penny jellies.” Frowning, I said, “I remember thinking, ‘If I can keep winning, it’ll keep him happy, and he’ll stop hitting my mother.’” Shrugging, I added, “So, I kept winning.”
“Did it work?”
I gave her a hard look. “What do you think?”
“That’s very interesting.”
“How’d you figure?”
“Because your mind didn’t automatically return to your mother.”
